プレスリリース

【Corporate Announcement】LINE Corporation Announces 2013 Q3 Earnings

Tokyo, Japan – November 7, 2013 – LINE Corporation, owner and operator of the free call and messaging app LINE, today announced its Q3 (July – September) earnings for 2013.

LINE Corporation’s revenue for the quarter was 19.1 billion JPY, an increase of 48% over the previous quarter.

Total revenue for LINE Corporation’s core business, LINE, was 9.9 billion JPY, which was calculated as net sales＊ from gross sales, with gross sales to-date equaling 15.6 billion JPY (an increase of 58.3% over the previous quarter).

■LINE Business Earnings for July – September, 2013

＊Net sales are calculated from sales taken from contracted developers from which the 30% handling fee from app stores such as Google or Apple has been deducted. (Net sales apply to the LINE GAME and LINE Manga services only.) Sales recording methods do not affect profits.

The increase in net sales based on the core LINE business is due to increases in in-game purchases (approx. 60%), sticker purchases (approx. 20%), and other areas such as official accounts and sponsored stickers.

Currently, LINE has 280 million users worldwide, and has the largest market share for messaging apps in Japan, Thailand, and Taiwan. Recently, it has been intensifying promotional efforts in India, and has already passed 10 million users in the region. User numbers are also increasing in Central and South America, Turkey, and Italy.

LINE GAME currently has 39 titles. New titles are being released this fall from developers in Finland and other European nations. Major titles are planned to be localized into other languages.

The stickers business is expanding globally, and now features more than 300 famous characters, along with characters based on major world sports personalities.

Comment from LINE Corporation CEO Akira Morikawa:

“As announced, we have seen a marked increase in user purchases from games and stickers. Added to this, new advertising services such as LINE Free Coins have seen a very favorable response, which gives us a good balance in growth between user purchases and advertising revenue.

However, LINE is still in the investment phase, and at the moment our focus is not on profits, but rather it is on improving our unique products to give the best possible service for our current customers, while investing in creating new services, developing new features, and pursuing marketing opportunities to expand our user base.

We predict that LINE will easily reach its target of 300 million users by the end of the year, and we will continue to seek new challenges as we aim to become a global platform.”

The above figures are based on preliminary internal financial information and may be amended by external auditors.